No list begs to be incomplete like one entitled "Essential Blender Resources," and the one posted here earlier was no exception. Here are a few more essentials that were not mentioned in the earlier post. Gentlemen, get your bookmarkers ready!
Models
- The Katorlegaz Blender 3D Model Repository - free, high quality Blender models ranging from animals to kitchen appliances to weapons.
Materials
- Sonix' Car Materials Library - 54 hot-roddin' blender materials that include chromes, auto paints, and more.
- Blender Materials Library - A collection various blender materials, a must-have for every Blender user.
- BrianH's Fur Library Vol 1 - A library of furs and fibers that takes advantage of the improved hair settings in the Blender 2.4 series.
Textures
- Imageafter - Free, high resolution (1600x1200) textures and reference images.
- Texture Bin 342 - Free high resolution photographic texture maps.
- Free Game Textures - Free JPG textures designed for realtime 3D.
- Fixing Lighting Irregulaties in Self-Tiling Maps - A tutorial on creating seamless repeating texture maps from photos.
- Mayang's Free Textures - Over 850 free, high resolution textures.
- Planetary image maps - High quality texture maps of planets in our solar system.
- Free Textures @ 3D-Rekonstruktionen.de - Download free textures in high resolution quality.
- High-Quality Textures - Free Digital downloadable textures for 3d builders and skinners for every 3d building application.
Special Effects
- Centralsource.com Effects Library - Flame, liquid, explosions, flares, and smoke effects. Some files and techniques are outdated but are still valuable learning resources.
Reference
You may also want to bookmark the following:
http://www.blender.org/cms/Resources.181.0.html
Almost all of the links posted here were pulled from this page of the official Blender website.
14 Comments
For those of you who saw the article disappear for 15 minutes: my bad; Spiderworm wasn't ready yet and I had already published it. We had to pull it to allow him to make the final changed. A big kudos for getting it ready in such a short amount of time! :)
Bart
PS: welcome aboard, David!
Yes! I saw
Saving!
Thanx!
Hi "spidey", wellcome on board :)
Great: Blender-Starter Question at a 3D forum today- "Where can i find tutorials and links for Blender?"
i gave him the link to this newspost on blendernation. thumbs up!
Simon
question @ Bart: When goes the blender gallery for februar online?
edit: i gave him the link to the first news, too- in this fresh newspost are no tutorials...bad for a beginner ;)
Simon - gallery! Ah... ehm.... yeah! This weekend? :)
Please wait until my landrover is ready...Sunday evening! It`s my animago entry. In the last 2 weeks i work every day min 3h (or many more ;) )on it (in my Sparetime)... Just one picture in this gallery and i`m happy until i die ;)
current WiP: http://www.revoltic.de/grafiken/landrover_currentwip060309.jpg
Sorry this list is less complete than intended, Simon. As Bart mentioned, it was sort of rushed to press. Thanks for telling others about us!
spiderworm
Thanks!
We REALLY need to:
- gather and sort ALL known materials like this
- figure out what's still relevant to the vurrent version of Blender
- what needs to be upgraded or simply done better (some Blender tutorials have great content but the presentation is lacking -- bad mic, mumbling, stammering, etc.). Blender is maturing into a very serious application that needs to have better representation in the tutorials available.
- have tutorials that are bite-sized and highly focused
- once-and-for-all set some standards by establishing a template and guidelines for anyone interested in creating a VIDEO (let's use modern technologies please) tutorial.
- only officially recognize tutorials that follow that standard.
- create a good logo that can be used to identify "officially approved" Blender tutorials. This will give the tutorial makers something to strive for and feel proud of having achieved. This will help to raise the level of effectiveness of the tutorials. You have to admit, there are quite a few that simply just aren't up to par.
@Kernon: good points. We need people who'll 'walk the talk' though (or: actually DO things instead of talking about them). If you think you're up to it, go ahead and take the initiative!
I don't know how you missed this essential link guys:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/Tutorials/Links
Material library: a lot of changes have happened in Blender's renderer since the last update of the matlib, it must be over 3 years ago that I last updated it. Even before we had any raytracing! However, as soon as I have the time (school permitting) I will be redoing these materials for the "modern day Blender". I still haven't decided on whether to only do procedural textures, or image maps as well, as they will bloat the library. Maybe there'll be two seperate blends. BTW, if anyone feels they have a good material they could donate, you can drop me a note and a blend file!
The link to BrianH's fur library doesn't work in Apple Safari.
In Firefox, I could download the zip-file, but could not unpack it.
Carlinhos
Thank you for sharing! I also decided to publish my photo texture library with over 4000 images for free on my website. You can find it here. http://www.tonytextures.com/free-photo-texture-gallery/ Really hope you can use it and like it!